She drew herself erect and faced him. "You must not speak like that," she said. "You are talking wildly. I tell you again this is not a simple thing." "Love is a simple thing," he rudely countered. "You are disappointing me, Peter." The pain in her eyes for a moment arrested his passion. He stood away from her, and grasped at his vanishing peace. Lady Mary perceived his effort, and appealed once more to the boy who had so suddenly leaped out of her knowledge. "You will listen to me, Peter!" she urged. He stood silently waiting to hear what she had to say. She spoke quickly, running from the breaking storm in his eyes: "I am quite content to be the wife of Lord Wenderby. I have always liked him and admired him. Six months ago he asked me if I would help him to join us politically. I have used my influence to bring him over. This pledges me to work with him." "Does it pledge you to be his wife?" "That is understood." "So Lord Wenderby has been bribed," Peter flashed. He looked at her cold and hostile. His thwarted pride of possession in Lady Mary stirred a cruelty he had never known. Between love and anger she cried to him: "This is not worthy of you, Peter." But Peter's mind was busy now elsewhere. He was putting time and fact together. "Lord Wenderby arranged for this six months ago," he suggested. "He asked me to be his wife six months ago." Now he stabbed at her again: "You have let me love the promised wife of Lord Wenderby for six months." "No," she sharply corrected him; "I answered him yesterday." "But you had this in your mind?" Peter insisted. Lady Mary was too deeply grieved for dignity or anger. "I am on my defence, it seems," she said, suddenly weary of their fruitless talk. "You have made me your judge," he bitterly retorted. "Why else do you tell me these things?" "I wanted you to understand." "I shall never understand." Lady Mary looked at Peter, and saw the face of an enemy. "We will put an end to this," she said. "It is useless." She moved to dismiss him. Peter saw her passing to another. He took her by the arm, harshly. "You cannot so easily be rid of me." "I do not know you, Peter," she protested, drawing away from him. He released her as to the troubled surface of his mind there came an impulse of his old devotion. "How can you do this thing?" he asked in a burst of grief. "You were the angel of my life." Her pride sank at this. "Peter, be just to me," she said. "This is a sacrifice." He caught at the word, and returned to his old refrain. "Sacrifice! You do not love Lord Wenderby." "I shall be his wife. I am content to work with him." "Lord Wenderby is old," said Peter brutally. "He has bribed you to give him all your beautiful years." She shrank from the climbing rhetoric of his passion. "It is infamous," he almost shouted. Lady Mary flung back the challenge.